London, July 6, IRNA — DUBLIN’S new Lord Mayor has proposed that the Irish capital be twinned with Gaza to show solidarity to the 1.5 million Palestinians besieged by Israeli inhumane blockade.
“Certainly I would feel for them in their hour of need and with what’s happened to the Palestinian people,” said councillor Gerry Breen, who was elected mayor last week.
“My feeling was sympathy for the people of Gaza. [The country] doesn’t necessarily need to benefit from it, sometimes you can do these things because it’s the right thing to do,” Breen said.
Dublin is already twinned with Barcelona, Liverpool, and San Jose in California, and the twinning of Gaza and Dublin would be a purely symbolic action.
“There may not be any achievement in it but it’s saying that we empathise with the plight of the inhabitants in that area,” the new mayor told the Irish Herald newspaper.
He said he had proposed before becoming mayor that Dublin City Council examines the possibility of twinning the Irish capital with Gaza in a motion for next monthly meeting of the council.
Relations between Ireland and Israel have been soured by its seizure of Irish humanitarian workers aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was attacked by masked Israeli commanders in international waters, killing at least nine activists.
Last month, the Irish government also responded to Mossad using fake Irish passports in January’s assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai by expelling an Israeli diplomat.
Breen played down that the twinning proposal was a pointed criticism of Israel, stressing that it would serve as an encouraging salute to the Palestinian people living under siege in Gaza.
“Other councillors have motioned criticism with Israel, and I think they’re ten a penny, and I think that sometimes a positive is better than a negative,” he said.
“I put it in as a motion as a councillor and I’ll live or die by whatever the motion is, and we’ll see what the outcome of it is,” the mayor said, suggesting he take a neutral stance.